At a very young age, Blake Holiday saw the future and it was on two wheels.

“I’ve always loved bicycles,” he says. “When I was 6, my dad taught me how to ride a bike in our front yard. I remember quite clearly the feeling of riding across that yard after my dad let go and hearing the wind in my ears and experiencing that feeling of being free. Then I ran right into a thorny bush and got cut up pretty badly. But I was hooked. And here I am 40 years later, still in love with riding my bike.”

Except now he’s riding for a cause and helping thousands of others do the same. After working for five years as a guide at Backroads Bicycling — an adventure company where he led biking, hiking, and multi-sport trips in Utah, Hawaii, Italy, the Pacific Northwest, and the Napa Valley — two of his friends from Backroads, Caeli Quinn and Geraldine Carter, had what Holiday, now 47, calls “a crazy idea.” They wanted to stage a multi-day bike ride from New York City to Washington, D.C., to raise money and awareness of climate change. In September 2008, the three organized what they thought would be a one-time event and had about 100 people sign up to ride and fundraise to benefit climate-related organizations — something that no one else was doing at the time.

Climate Ride participants pose in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., a repeat destination for riders.(Photo: Submitted)

“Somehow we made it through and [when I arrived in] in D.C. I called my mother to let her know we made it OK,” says Holiday. “It was such a powerful experience meeting so many amazing people who really cared about this issue that I broke down in tears talking with her. I knew right then I had found something special to be part of.” By the next year, he’d help put together a nonprofit IRS application that cemented Climate Ride’s place as a real organization. The 2009 ride, also from New York City to Washington D.C., was a big success and in 2010 they moved the ride to California’s North Coast. Since then, they’ve added more rides each year and will be running 10 events in 2018.

Climate Ride’s mission is twofold: to raise money for organizations working on sustainability and active transportation, and to inspire the people who participant in their events to take action in their local communities. The organization has a physical office in Missoula, Mont., and a total of six employees — Holiday is one of three who work from home. He moved to Palm Springs just over 10 years ago and lives in Demuth Park.

“I came down here [from Santa Cruz] to visit a friend and ended up never leaving,” he says. “I absolutely love Palm Springs. The people who live here, the local restaurants and bars, the many charity events that happen here have really captured my imagination. But most of my time is spent on the road researching new events, guiding our rides and hikes, and I’m also the lead on organizing our meet-and-greet recruiting events all over the country.”

Blake Holiday is pumped for a Climate Ride in August in Iceland.(Photo: Submitted)

Holiday notes that Climate Ride is unique because it allows participants to choose the beneficiaries of their fundraising from a list of more than 150 organizations working on sustainability, active transportation, climate issues, renewable energy, conservation, and health. “This nexus of causes really resonates with people because they’re all related,” says Holiday. “About 40 percent of our grants program goes to active transportation organizations like bike coalitions, and about 60 percent goes to sustainability and climate-related projects.”

The National Parks Conservation Association is one organization that’s benefited from Climate Ride’s support — and not just in monetary terms. “The rides and hikes allow us to connect to whole new audiences — diverse and engaged people from all over the country who often end up supporting our mission to protect national parks,” says Mark Wenzler, the association’s senior vice president of conservation programs. “And the grants allow us to do even more to fight for clean air and a healthy climate for the national parks.”

In the U.S., Climate Ride’s trips usually touch on the national parks in some way. Among them are two rides in California: the North Coast from near Eureka to San Francisco and one in Death Valley National Park. There’s also a ride and hike in Glacier National Park, Utah’s Bryce Canyon, and Zion National Park. Their Pacific Northwest ride explores the Salish Sea and the San Juan Islands, Vancouver Island, and Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.

“We just started branching out into international destinations to bring people out to see firsthand the effects of climate change around the world,” Holiday says. “We ran an incredible nine-day trip in Vietnam and Cambodia last year that highlighted the challenges in the Mekong Delta [and] this past August, we organized an amazing mountain bike ride in Iceland. In 2018, we’re offering rides in Nova Scotia and Bhutan.” (Participant fundraising minimums vary for each event and range from $2,000 to $4,500.)

And the organization’s purpose seems even more relevant at a time when the debate around whether climate change is even real continues to swirl in today’s political environment. “I’ve listened to countless talks during our events,” says Holiday. “One of the best parts about Climate Rides is our evening program where we invite scientists, members of Congress, ambassadors, climate experts, authors, activists, bicycle advocates, renewable energy CEOs, and many others to come speak and share their knowledge. All of them say the same thing: Climate change is the biggest challenge facing humanity. I think it’s going to take a groundswell of public will to face these challenges, but after meeting more than 2,000 riders and hikers on our trips in the past 10 years, I’m convinced that there are enough incredible people out there to turn the tide, so to speak.”

“I’ve always said that my mission in life is to create community, and that’s why I love active travel,” says Holiday. “There’s such a feeling of excitement when a trip unfolds day by day. Each ride or hike becomes a unique story and all of the participants become characters in that narrative, each playing their role. They themselves are the heroes — working through their fears and trepidations, making it over that big hill, riding their hearts out in service of the greatest cause facing our planet. That’s what drives me — crafting these experiences for our guests [and] setting the stage so they have a chance to be bigger than they think they are. I love helping them shine.”